When ex-President George H.W. Bush declares, as he did recently, that President Obama "is entitled to civil treatment and intellectual honesty when it comes to critics," I appreciate the sentiment. After all, civility and intellectual honestly are virtually non-existent on the Limbaugh-Beck-Hannity-Coulter-Malkin-O'Reilly right, and, while there are a few notable exceptions, in short supply among conservatives generally. What's more, things do seem to have gotten worse since his presidency, what with the rise of 24/7 cable news and the increase of vitriol in the public sphere. (And, yes, I acknowledge that there is incivility and dishonesty across the political spectrum, not just on the right, where it seems to be most intense, and at its worst.)
But does the ex-president not remember his ugly, Lee Atwater-driven '88 campaign against "Massachusetts liberal" Michael Dukakis? (You know, Willie Horton; the superficial culture war wedge-issues (flag burning, the pledge of allegiance); the nasty (and false) rumours spread not just about Dukakis but about his wife; the hypocritical anti-Ivy League, anti-elitist comments from Bush (himself an Ivy League-educated north-eastern elitist); the various attacks on Massachusetts, on the Northeast, on liberalism, on the ACLU, and so on?) No, perhaps Bush has white-washed his own political past and willfully forgotten his own incivility and dishonesty, both of which were on grotesque display back in 1988.
So while it's a fine and perhaps even noble sentiment, not least because it comes in defence of a Democratic president from a Republican ex-president whose own presidential son did so much to make matters worse, a little historical context reveals it to be rather less admirable, if still sincere, than it might otherwise have been.
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